Todays difficulty increase to 156000, where from here?

[Littleshop]

So in about seven hours the difficulty will change.  Where do you see it going next?  It is going to be around 156000 today.

My guest.... 170000

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[molecular]

So in about seven hours the difficulty will change.  Where do you see it going next?  It is going to be around 156000 today.

My guest.... 170000

My guess.... 222222

You know you can bet on this on http://bitbet.org? Unfortunately that site is down and will be for some weeks as it seems due to hw fail.

[allinvain]

So in about seven hours the difficulty will change.  Where do you see it going next?  It is going to be around 156000 today.

My guest.... 170000

Hmm seems I'll have to put off some mining hardware expansion I've been planning. Let's see though if price will go up again

[Grinder]

The difficulty seems to have been increasing linearly for the last few weeks, so 200 000.

[grndzero]

So in about seven hours the difficulty will change.  Where do you see it going next?  It is going to be around 156000 today.

My guest.... 170000

Hmm seems I'll have to put off some mining hardware expansion I've been planning. Let's see though if price will go up again

I think the only reason the price is this high is because some experienced investors saw a pretty much virgin market that they could put a decent enough amount of cash into to be able to game it and make a quick profit. Luckily it has held the levels that it got up to and even creeped up a bit further, but there's not nearly the movement in the last week that there was in the previous 2 with some really wild swings.

[proudhon]

So in about seven hours the difficulty will change.  Where do you see it going next?  It is going to be around 156000 today.

My guest.... 170000

Hmm seems I'll have to put off some mining hardware expansion I've been planning. Let's see though if price will go up again

I think the only reason the price is this high is because some experienced investors saw a pretty much virgin market that they could put a decent enough amount of cash into to be able to game it and make a quick profit. Luckily it has held the levels that it got up to and even creeped up a bit further, but there's not nearly the movement in the last week that there was in the previous 2 with some really wild swings.

Yeah, it was crazy there for a couple weeks, and there was a lot of speculation based on that movement that the price would reach $100 and even $1000 by the end of the year, which now seems pretty unreasonable.  If I had to guess, I'd say we'll be lucky to reach $10 by the end of the year.

[grndzero]

So in about seven hours the difficulty will change.  Where do you see it going next?  It is going to be around 156000 today.

My guest.... 170000

Hmm seems I'll have to put off some mining hardware expansion I've been planning. Let's see though if price will go up again

I think the only reason the price is this high is because some experienced investors saw a pretty much virgin market that they could put a decent enough amount of cash into to be able to game it and make a quick profit. Luckily it has held the levels that it got up to and even creeped up a bit further, but there's not nearly the movement in the last week that there was in the previous 2 with some really wild swings.

Yeah, it was crazy there for a couple weeks, and there was a lot of speculation based on that movement that the price would reach $100 and even $1000 by the end of the year, which now seems pretty unreasonable.  If I had to guess, I'd say we'll be lucky to reach $10 by the end of the year.

I'm not watching it as close since I got out of the market, but it looks like it has only gone up about 0.30 BTC in the last week. In the previous 3 weeks it went from sub-$1 to $3.50 .. and has been trying this whole week to get to $4 and doesn't look much like it topped $3.75-3.80.

I thought it would take me 90-100 days to break even on my hardware investment. Since the value shot up my hardware paid for itself in 3 weeks and I even reinvested some to add another card. Until 1 broke tonight

[JJG]

I thought it would take me 90-100 days to break even on my hardware investment. Since the value shot up my hardware paid for itself in 3 weeks and I even reinvested some to add another card. Until 1 broke tonight

Ahhh, the joys of being on the right side of a bubble. 

Hopefully your card is still under warranty. Be sure to read the manufacturer's fine print if you bought it used. Some times you'll still be covered. If you can contact the original owner and s/he's helpful, you'll have even better luck.

[compro01]

current break even point (at 9 cents per kilowatt-hour) is 11.4 joules per megahash (or 11.4 watts per megahash/s for those who don't fully grok metric).

[gmaxwell]

The difficulty seems to have been increasing linearly for the last few weeks, so 200 000.

The difficulty only steps every 2016 blocks, which is about ~2 weeks.

The hashrate looks pretty linear— on an exponential scale: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png

[Grinder]

The difficulty only steps every 2016 blocks, which is about ~2 weeks.
The hashrate looks pretty linear— on an exponential scale: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png

I meant the hash rate, and for the last couple of weeks the increase has been fairly linear on a linear scale.
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png

[Littleshop]

Wow.  Someone turned on some miners right after the difficulty change.  Uggg.

[rezin777]

I think the only reason the price is this high is because some experienced investors saw a pretty much virgin market that they could put a decent enough amount of cash into to be able to game it and make a quick profit. Luckily it has held the levels that it got up to and even creeped up a bit further, but there's not nearly the movement in the last week that there was in the previous 2 with some really wild swings.

I would guess that the DDOS on Gox had something to do with the decline in volume, since it coincided with the attack. Also, coinpal went down at the same time and if I'm not mistaken mndrix used Gox to balance out his accounts. I think those two incidents have far more to do with the volume change than a couple experienced investors, but I could be wrong.

[gmaxwell]

So in about seven hours the difficulty will change.  Where do you see it going next?  It is going to be around 156000 today.

My guest.... 170000

At the current rate over the last 9 blocks— assuming that the mining capacity doesn't change at all— the next difficulty will be around 217126. The rate of the last hundred blocks gives 172708... assuming that http://blockexplorer.com/q/nethash/100 actually computes the rate correctly across a difficulty change. I'd consider this an absolute lower bound.

The formula for this is hashes_per_second/((2^256 / (65535 * 2^208.))/600.) = difficulty.

If the continues rate of hashing growth continues at the current rate of ~2.5%/day then my first number becomes 243254  and the second number becomes 193492.

A more conservative growth assumption of 2%/day gives 189111, which I think I'd make my likely lower bound estimate.

[Littleshop]

Thanks. Very usefull info there!

[compro01]

Holy crap. almost 700 Ghash/s of power just popped up on the network.  We're currently sitting at 1.852 Thash.

did the mystery miner come back?

if all that new power doesn't go away soon, we're looking at a 100k jump in difficulty next adjustment, in about 8 days.

[Cablesaurus]

Which is why difficulty should have been tied to something aside from hash speed.
Someone like Mystery Miner only has to activate their array for a short time each difficulty cycle and the rest of the network will not have enough time to lower the difficulty in correct proportion.
Essentially an attack.

[gmaxwell]

Which is why difficulty should have been tied to something aside from hash speed.
Someone like Mystery Miner only has to activate their array for a short time each difficulty cycle and the rest of the network will not have enough time to lower the difficulty in correct proportion.
Essentially an attack.

... No.  It's all linear and over the whole period.  It doesn't matter where in the window you run your hashing, all hashing has the same effect on the difficulty.

[allinvain]

Now that difficulty is at 157,426, I'm wondering what you guys plan to do? Add more rigs ? Who here plans to stop mining?

[Littleshop]

Which is why difficulty should have been tied to something aside from hash speed.
Someone like Mystery Miner only has to activate their array for a short time each difficulty cycle and the rest of the network will not have enough time to lower the difficulty in correct proportion.
Essentially an attack.

I would not consider that an attack. I would consider it competition.